Edited by Susan Visvanathan

Contributors are teachers of sociology/social anthropology at university level

Structure and Transformation

Theory and Society in India

Edited by Susan Visvanathan

Description

This book examines the key debates, both theoretical and empirical, in the fields of urbanization, industrialization and stratification in India. The essays in the volume engage with the problems of typologies--tribal, peasant and industrial--in order to rethink the issues of modernity and tradition. The authors problematize a vast array of literature on tribal, peasant and industrial sociology, grappling with conceptual problems caused by the uncritical application of theories germinated in the West to the Indian context. The primary assumption of all the essays is that the conventional binary opposition between primitive and modern, and the evolutionary schema of viewing the world in terms of First, Second and Third Worlds is redundant to our times. Keeping this in mind, the book provides an essential framework for understanding globalization. The contributors to the volume attempt to engage with the discursive and volatile aspects of the discipline of sociology, enlivening and re-invigorating old debates through an understanding of questions teachers and students put to each other in classroom situations, thus enabling students to read sociology in a new and refreshing way. In a new Preface, the editor contextualizes the issues of tribe, caste, gender and work in tribal, peasant and industrial societies in the current scenario.It is essential reading for students and teachers of sociology and anthropology, bureaucrats, administrators, social workers, journalists and the interested lay reader.

Structure and Transformation

Theory and Society in India

Edited by Susan Visvanathan

Author Information

Susan Visvanathan is Professor at the Centre for the Study of Social Systems in the School of Social Sciences at Jawaharlal Nehru University, India.

Contributors:

Sheena Jain, Professor and Head of Sociology, Jamia Milia Islamia, India Shobhita Jain, Former Professor and Head of Sociology, School of Social Sciences, Indira Gandhi National Open University, India Cherian Joseph, Director of ATW Nirman Pvt. Ltd, Kolkata, India Kuriakose Mamkoottam, Professor of Management Studies, University of Delhi Tulsi Patel, Professor of Sociology, Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi Satish Saberwal, Former Professor of Sociology, Centre for the Study of Social Systems, Jawaharlal Nehru University, India Savyasaachi, Reader of Sociology at Jamia Milia Islamia, India K.L Sharma, Former Professor of Sociology, Centre for the Study of Social Systems, Jawaharlal Nehru University Shiv Visvanathan, Professor, Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Information and Communication Technology, India